US fines American Airlines 4.1 million over significant tarmac delays


Air travel in the US has increasingly become more and more of a racket over the last few decades. Base ticket prices are expensive, and then you have all of the add-ons, like luggage fees, seating, carry-on bags, etc. Cost aside, you’re likely to face delays and cancellations, which can really mess up your travel plans, cause a ton of unnecessary stress and, in some cases, financial burden. For example, if an airline cancels your flight because of “weather,” they are not required to help you pay for a night in a hotel. More on that later!

Since taking office in 2021, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has been busy trying to enact changes to air travel. He set up the Dept. of Transportation’s Customer Service Dashboard for more transparency to try to shame airlines into doing right by customers. Don’t worry, airlines are still finding ways to cheat the system; again, more on that later. I guess he’s also been enforcing rules already set in place as well because American Airlines was just fined $4.1 million for keeping passengers on board for too long during delays. Good. Keep it coming, Secretary Pete.

The federal government is fining American Airlines $4.1 million for dozens of instances in which passengers were kept on board planes without a chance to exit during long ground delays.

The U.S. Department of Transportation said Monday it is the largest such fine against an airline since rules covering long ground delays took effect about a decade ago.

American owes half the fine in the next 30 days, while the department gave the airline credit for the other half, just over $2 million, for compensation it paid to delayed passengers, according to a consent order that settled the case.

The department said its investigation revealed that from 2018 through 2021, American kept 43 domestic flights stuck on the ground for at least three hours without giving passengers — 5,821 in all — the chance to deplane. There are exceptions in which airlines are allowed to bend the rules, including for safety and security reasons, but the department said none of those were factors in the flights it identified.

“This is the latest action in our continued drive to enforce the rights of airline passengers,” said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who vowed to hold airlines accountable under consumer-protection laws.

According to the consent order, American said it seeks to avoid any lengthy ground delays, but the 43 flights represented a tiny fraction of 1% of the roughly 7.7 million flights that American and American Eagle operated between 2018 and 2021. The airline said it provided “substantial compensation” to delayed passengers,” and has since devoted more management attention to avoiding delays.

Most of the delays occurred at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, where American is the dominant airline, and others occurred in San Antonio and Houston when flights heading to DFW were diverted there. Many occurred during thunderstorms, and American was unable to manage its airport gates to let passengers deplane.

The airline took particular issue with delays at Reagan Washington National Airport during a winter storm in January 2019, but accepted the settlement outline in the consent order.

[From NPR]

I am still pretty salty over the big airlines getting a bailout at the start of the pandemic because they took their 2017 tax cut money and spent it on stock buybacks instead of keeping a “rainy day” fund. I want my tax dollars to pay for public schools, libraries, and parks, not for a bunch of airlines to not go bankrupt because their rich CEOs wanted to get richer. I hope passengers get more rights, too. That thing I said above about airlines finding ways to cheat the system? Well, earlier this month, my family and I were on a mid-afternoon flight out of LaGuardia that was repeatedly delayed because our pilot was stuck on a plane that was having maintenance issues out of Washington, D.C. Two different gate agents told us this for hours. It was eventually canceled. Thankfully, my husband and kids ended up getting on a flight off of standby. We were told that American Airlines would reimburse any hotel expenses, so some people from my flight booked hotels. About 15 minutes later, we were told that the flight had been canceled because of “weather” and – I quote – “There is nothing we can do for you. We don’t owe you anything.”

So, how did American get away with this? Well, the plane was delayed for mechanical issues, but as soon as the radar called for storms along our route, they were able to cancel it for “weather.” That is some BS right there. The flight my family took? It left at the same time as the original flight’s last rescheduled time. I ended up getting off standby for a flight that left around 10 p.m. (and wrote two CB posts from the airport!) and got home around midnight, but I was one of the lucky ones. The people who booked hotels? They won’t be reimbursed. All because American had a broken plane and got lucky that there was rain somewhere on the East Coast. So yeah, I am jumping for joy that American faced some consequences and hope more airlines are held accountable in the future. Secretary Pete, let’s get on figuring out a high-speed rail, okay?

photos via Instagram and credit Jim West/ImageBROKER/Avalon

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

19 Responses to “US fines American Airlines 4.1 million over significant tarmac delays”

Comments are Closed

We close comments on older posts to fight comment spam.

  1. It Really Is You, Not Me says:

    Interesting. I have flown American exclusively on 10 work trips so 10 trips x 4 flights each = 40 flights in the last year and have not experienced any significant delays once on the plane, but I also try not to connect through DFW where most of the problems seem to be. I also live in Florida so after my first couple of trips being delayed for weather, I did some research that said early flights are less likely to experience delays and that seems to be working.

    Last month My sister flew American once with me and volunteered to deplane onto another flight because of an air conditioner problem. It took her almost 18 hours to get home but she got $1200 in airline credit.

    • CROWHOOD says:

      I came here to say the exact opposite! I have traveled exclusively on American Airlines for a similar # of work flights a year for years. My boss, who flys out of a delta hub, knows I need An extra night of hotel stay for most trips to either get in the night before to avoid the inevitable delays or to stay when there’s the inevitable cancellation on my way home.

      The admirals club is also the worst airline lounge/concierge service program in the industry in my opinion. I could write a dissertation about my loathing of American Airlines.

  2. FancyPants says:

    I got a $500 voucher a few years ago after I wrote an angry letter after they told me my flight was canceled due to “an act of god.” I told them they might as well blame Santa Claus because gods are not an actual thing and they can’t assume everyone believes in sky fairies who rule the world. The downside of vouchers and credits is they come from the same crappy companies who will never do better, and what are ya gonna do- drive??

    • Carol502 says:

      I literally did drive from NYC to my city (12 hours) because my last flight coming back from a trip to Europe was canceled before I woke up on the day I was coming home. I was rescheduled fora same day flight home once I got to the US and then that flight was canceled and the soonest they could get me near home (an airport 1.5 hours away) was two days later. I was not sticking around to see if that flight made it or not.

  3. ML says:

    Flying is environmentally terrible and can be an absolute pain in the a$$. Since I live across the ocean from friends and family, I fly long distance every 2 years. The worst experience I’ve had is technical problems which led to cancellation. You don’t want this for an international flight! You have to go back through customs, get your luggage, get to the hotel and economy passengers get to do this last. For an afternoon flight, this means hitting the hotel with a stranger around 2 in the morning and getting up at 4:30 to make your overseas flight. It sucked.
    As to the cost of flying, I feel like the prices for overseas (my mom is an immigrant) travel when I was a kid in the 80s weren’t that much more expensive than tickets are now. At some point during the nineties, the costs started decreasing and a lot more people fly. Most families I knew as a kid would drive one or two days to go on vacation down south or out west from Pennsylvania. Now just about everyone I know would take the plane for those distances instead.

  4. manda says:

    ughhhhh flying gives me sooooo much stress!! I learned to take earlier flights so, if your original flight is canceled, then you are more likely to get on a later one. I had a bad experience sitting around for 8ish hours while a flight was delayed and delayed and then canceled, but luckily my sister was able to come get me and I didn’t have to deal with hotel, etc. And I try to keep it direct, so I don’t have weird connection snafus. I can’t handle that kind of stuff!

  5. Becks1 says:

    Airlines can be the worst. There are just no consequences to “mistakes.” I think people understand when there is a genuine weather event – an ice storm or a blizzard (my brother and SIL were stranded overnight with a 2.5 year old and a one year old when there was that huge storm in Minnesota in 2010, the one that collapsed the roof of the Metrodome – that was one where the airlines just can’t do anything.) But I’ve been at the airport for hours because there is a “technical issue” and you’re just sitting there hoping it gets fixed.

    I remember when the baggage fees kicked into gear….maybe a decade ago? Maybe 15 years ago? And became the norm….it was when oil prices were sky high and the airlines were like “we’ll remove the feees when oil prices drop.”

    LOL for days!

    • DaveW says:

      Too funny…a friend and I were stuck in MN during that same storm. We were traveling from Atlanta to WI for a wedding and had a connector through Minneapolis, we both had checked our luggage which got lost, etc. but we made it through, remained friends at the end of it all and it’s still my best travel story.

  6. SusieQ says:

    I’m 37, and I’ve been flying since I was 6 months old. I remember being excited to fly as a kid in the late 80s and for all of the 90s. There were so many different airlines, the planes were in good condition, main cabin meant plenty of legroom, you could check your bags and they didn’t get lost, and flights were rarely canceled. And the smaller airport my family used had tons of flights.

    But it’s been a nightmare for the last 20 years. I try to take Amtrak when I can, but its routes are limited where I live. And I really don’t like car trips over 8 hours, so flying is (theoretically) easier for long-haul destinations.

    • DaveW says:

      In one of the walkways at Reagan/National they have an exhibit of the history of the airport, including an old sign listing all the airlines that once flew out of there. I was amazed at how many are no longer around that I remember flying on (I’m in my early 50’s), like TWA and Eastern.

  7. ThatsNotOkay says:

    They also pad their arrival time so if they’re delayed half an hour/45 minutes, they’re still “on time” for arrival. Meanwhile, it messes up whatever ride you have arranged if you go by what the airline quotes, because you usually arrive “early” when you depart on time, in other words, your arrive at the time the airlines used to list. It’s such a racket and a scam. And they’re lying if they are claiming they compensated people for their delays or over bookings. Even if you complain they make you jump through hoops to get any meager voucher, starting by making you wait on hold on the phone for eight hours at a time.

  8. Kirsten says:

    What I don’t understand is how the airlines can’t see that if they made things easier, consistent, and more transparent, they’d do more business and make more money. A flight should cost the same amount of money no matter what day or time of day you take it or book it. People obviously are willing to pay extra for genuine upgrades like business or first class, but the other fees and price changes are all ridiculous. They’ve gone way too far with assuming that people have to fly so they can do whatever they want.

    • BeanieBean says:

      Time of day, day of week, yes! But even more, the person in the seat next to you should be paying the same as you! That’s the thing that gets me! They vary the price of those tickets & a lot depends on when you buy that ticket.

  9. LeonsMomma says:

    Always book first flight of the day — and counterintuitively when I am heading back home — the last flight of the day. For some reason, the last flight out to a city (for me) doesn’t get canceled. (KNOCKS ON WOOD 3x).

  10. SeemaLikely says:

    A $4.1 million fine? Puhlease. Last year, American earned $1.4 billion just in baggage fees.

  11. aggie says:

    All of the airlines suck but American is particularly bad. I was on a trip in June where my American flight was delayed 4x from Logan and then while on the runway another American plane hit us.

    They gave us pizza back in the terminal and some extra points, that’s it.

    • Colleen says:

      Holy crap!! I hope you filled out that form on the DOT website to report that. That’s insane (and so scary).

  12. Concern Fae says:

    A fine is a price.

    And stock buybacks are theft. They rightly used to be seen as a corrupt practice and were banned until fairly recently. They need to be made illegal again. It’s literally money that used to be reinvested in the company, but now instead goes into the pockets of the top executives and investors.

  13. SKE says:

    Wow read this just as I was about to book an international flight on American. Think I’ll wait for another deal with another carrier!